Monthly Archives: April 2011

Solid modeling for artists and makers“Have your first 3D project ready for printing in minutes. Tinkercad is a new and faster way of creating designs for your 3D printer. With the help of the latest web technology you can now use a solid modeling CAD directly in your browser. The user interface is designed to get things done fast and to be quick to learn. With only three basic tools you can create a wide range of useful things. Once your project is ready simply download the STL file and start your 3D print. Sign up for a free account now!” Tinkercad

Discovery paves way for “optical battery” to generate solar power without solar cells“It has long been thought that, even though light has electric and magnetic components, the effects of the magnetic field are so weak that they could effectively be ignored. Now researchers at the University of Michigan (U-M) have discovered that under the right conditions, a light field can generate magnetic effects that are 100 million times stronger than previously expected. The researchers say the discovery paves the way for the creation of an “optical battery” that could harness power from the sun without the use of solar cells.”

Twitter-Based Game Creates Video Game Obstacles From Real World Experiences“The app-based platform takes the angle of “playing with reality” — initially a combination of two standalone games that integrate real-world tweets into the gameplay. ‘Route 140′ is the first, a racing-style game where obstacles that players must avoid and overcome in the game world are generated by tweets reacting to people’s experiences in the real world. In the tongue-in-cheek shooter-style game ‘Love City,’ the playable character’s weapons are generated by relevant phrases that appear in the twitterverse, loaded with ammunition from negative tweets – and “enemies” appear whenever references to “love” are mentioned.” PSFK

DONA: Donation Motivating Robot “DONA is a robot that interactively solicits donations from passers-by. How? It engages people in a pet-like interaction. People rarely respond to adult humans in need but babies and animals? It’s very hard for us to resist. A wonderful exercise in behavioral science, sociology and robotics.”Yanko Design

Taptu Brings A Personalized And Customizable Social News Reading App To The iPad“The app offers a StreamStore, which allows you to search and choose for news streams. You can also import your RSS feeds as well. The app goes beyond just aggregating news from your social feeds and sources and allows you to personalize your streams. You can act as a DJ for news streams, and can aggregate and merge select news feeds into one stream. So you could create your Tech news stream with various technology news sources. You can also change the size of the stream to display its content more prominently or modify the color of your streams, allowing you to color code by interest.”

Self-Erasing Toshiba Drive Foils Thieves and Forgetful Owners“I applaud the logic behind Toshiba’s self-erasing drives, which uses encryptions to recognize which machine it’s in. If taken out and used in another PC, the encryption keys destroy the data, and voila, no-one can see all those photos and video you’ve meticulously stored away.”